Monday, August 16, 2010

Signing Deadline

Midnight eastern tonight is the MLB signing deadline for drafted players, so it'll be an active day on the transaction wire.

For our part, last week we were able to come to agreements with two picks: 3rd round RHP Zach Cates and 8th round OF Jose Dore. Both were signed for well above slot money, but we expected that on draft day when we selected them. Nevertheless, it's good to have them signed and in the organization.

We're still working on a handful of other players, including 1st round RHP Karsten Whitson, 6th round RHP John Barbato, 7th round RHP AJ Vanegas, and 15th round OF/1B Sean Dwyer. While we're hopeful to sign these guys, signing more than one of them would be an incredible outcome for us. Whitson, like most of the top half of the first round, has elected to wait until today to make a decision, and the other three were all expecting significant dollars to pass on college, which is the only reason they were available when we took them. Their talent dictated much higher positioning in the draft.

We'll see what tonight brings, but we're not expecting much until the final hour before the deadline.

9 comments:

As Scott Hairston just turns a 3-0 pitch into a weak infield pop-up, can you please explain to Padres' fans why Bud Black keeps running him out there despite his consistent failures at the plate and negligible contribution in the field?

Paul, we need a good explanation here on why we didn't sign Whitson. Without more information I've got to put this on Moorad. No way the new scouting dept. and Hoyer didn't go to the boss to ask him to open up his pocketbook a little. Moorad is probably using the recent 1st-place goodwill to make up for this devastating non-sign(San Diego fans simply aren't savvy enough to see anything past being in 1st and Moorad knows it). This is complete crap. What the heck are you guys spending money on? No big free agents, no international signings this year and now the team fails to sign its first rounder in a draft where it doesn't even have any sandwich picks? Ridiculous. We're supposed to be building through the draft and player development!! I can't express how mad and disappointed I am right now. I've been to about 15 games this year, but I'm not buying another ticket this year. I simply cannot support this nonsense. No wonder we're a minor league city.

Meet the new boss...same as the old boss.

P.S. I actually like you Paul, and I eagerly await your positive spin on this one. Good luck, you're gonna need it.

Can you give us all some idea how a team picking this high has problems signing their first round pick? I can only imagine you have to have some idea of his demands before picking him, otherwise picking the most talented players available is completely worthless.

I worry that this story is going to partially mute the success on the field because even with the 2nd lowest payroll in MLB, the team appears unwilling (not unable) to spend the money that they bring in.

Maybe that's harsh, but given 30M of extra room in the MLB, shouldn't there be space for draft picks?

It's entirely disappointing on one level and to be completely honest entirely unacceptable as someone who spends money at the park.

Paul, this is terrible. I thought the new regime would be "building through the draft." Instead it seems to be more of the same ineptitude when it comes to handling the draft, especially the 1st round. As a smaller-market club we cannot afford to keep blowing it like this. The best we could muster was bringing in the 59th best player in the draft. Inexcusable.

Did Moorad simply refuse to increase the club's offer? Or did the scouting department completely blow it assessing the kid's signability? Something went terribly wrong here and we deserve to know what it was.

I also noticed we only signed 2 out of the 14 or 15 high schoolers we drafted. It just appears that Moorad isn't willing to make the commitment he promised, to bring in top young talent.

And if Moorad refuses to spend money in the draft, then just where the heck IS HE going to spend money? The payroll is near the bottom of MLB, its clear we aren't going to resign Adrian or bring in top free agents, and now we don't even spend a competitive figure in the draft?! It seems as if he is using the goodwill created by this MLB season to pull one over on us. After all, Pads fans aren't the most savvy - we generally can't see past the big league team's current success.

This year's been great, but lets be real here - its been a bit fluky as well. Its a borderline miracle that Bud has the team where it is considering he was sending a AAA outfield out there the whole year until Ludwick came in. Latos is a stud and Richard might be a decent back-end inning eater, but I don't see much of a future with the rest of the staff.

The only way we remain competitive long-term is to kill it in the draft. Which is why today is a bad day to be a Padre fan.

Thanks for letting me vent, Paul. I hope Moorad turns out to be better than the last guy, but right now I'm not a fan.